SAA2023で発表を行います

2023年6月5日～7日に開催されるSociety for Ambulatory Assessment Conference 2023 (SAA2023)で、以下の発表を行います。

Igarashi, T., Mitsunaga, H., Hirashima, T., & Yoshida, T. (2023). The power of one-sided relationship: Mitigating loneliness through parasocial relationships with real and virtual figures. Paper presented at the Society for Ambulatory Assessment Conference 2023, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

In modern society, tackling loneliness is a pivotal and challenging issue to solve with priority. One clue for the challenge is that loneliness is conceptualized as a cognitive discrepancy between one's current and ideal social situations. We examined whether people alleviate loneliness by employing parasocial relationships (imaginary social relationships) with real (e.g., celebrities/athletes) and virtual (e.g., fictional characters) figures to achieve ideal psychological outcomes in social contexts. We collected intensive longitudinal data from 502 crowdsourcing workers in Japan for two weeks (four times per day) using an experience sampling (ES) method on smartphones. We measured trait loneliness and depression before and after the ES and state loneliness, daily activities, and subjective evaluations of the activities during the ES. Daily activities involved solitary activities (baseline), face-to-face/computer-mediated interactions with others, thinking about real others, and thinking about parasocial relationships. The dataset included about 26000 responses (response rate = 93%). We used two-part residual dynamic structural equation modeling (RDSEM) for analysis. Trait loneliness after the ES was significantly related to state loneliness during the ES under controlling depression. Compared to the baseline, the experience of face-to-face/computer-mediated interactions decreased state loneliness directly. Notably, thinking about parasocial relationships decreased state loneliness through the evaluations of the experience as positive, ideal, and cathartic. In contrast, thinking about real others increased state loneliness via the interpretations of the experience as habituated and self- and past-related. The findings imply that humans' imaginative capacity to envision ideal social connections can significantly mitigate loneliness.

現代社会において、孤独への取り組みは、優先的に解決すべき極めて重要かつ困難な課題である。本研究では、対人関係の理想と現実の食い違いとして概念化される孤独感を緩和する方略として、実在の人物（有名人）やバーチャルな人物（キャラクター）とのパラソーシャルな関係を想像することで、孤独感が緩和されることを明らかにした。特に、これらの関係がネガティブな感情を低減することで、孤独感が緩和されるプロセスが見出された。この結果は、理想的な社会的つながりに対する想像力を活用することが、孤独に対処するための有効な方略になりうることを示唆している。